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Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, is the world’s most popular weed killer. However, evidence is mounting against the safety of the product and the studies, many funded by large chemical companies, used to endorse its safety. We are left wondering, how did glyphosate, first declared a carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1985 (PDF), come to be declared non-carcinogenic by the EPA only six years later?

Today, 26 years after the fact and with billions of dollars in sales — Monsanto made $4.76 billion from Roundup in 2015 — a review by the World Health Organization (WHO) determined that glyphosate is “probably” carcinogenic. The review, done by WHO’s International Agency for Research In Cancer, found that the chemical herbicide increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma as well as DNA and chromosomal damage. On July 7, 2017, the state of California agreed and listed glyphosate as a carcinogen. As you might expect, Monsanto vehemently denies this claim.

Another recent study, supported and reported on by Sustainable Pulse, contradicts the EPA’s assumption that glyphosate does not accumulate in the human body. This study found that glyphosate herbicide is present in alarming levels in breast milk of American females. Samples of mother’s milk from women in the United States contained levels of the weed-killer that were 760 to 1,600 time greater than the amount of pesticides allowed by the European Water Directive. The study also found that urine from American mothers contained levels of glyphosate ten times higher than urine from European women.

It is widely believed that herbicides containing glyphosate, many manufactured in China, are a threat to the very farm lands on which our food is grown. This article in The New York Timesexplains the negative effects glyphosate has on soil, effects that include compaction and resultant runoff, the killing of beneficial microbes and bacteria, and the exhaustion of necessary minerals and other nutrients that plants require.

Inert ingredients in Roundup also pose health problems. Scientific Americanreported in 2009 that the polyethoxylated tallowamine carried by Roundup can “kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.” It is important to note, that the EPA does not require inert ingredients to be listed on the product label. In fact, many companies protect the identity of these chemicals as trade secrets.

With the mounting evidence showing that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weed killer is dangerous, we ask; why risk the health of your family and the planet? Planet Natural offers plenty of all-natural weed-eliminating options that are effective and safe to use.